


A Meeting at Six

by TheBoxQueen



Series: Crew-10613 [4]
Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-27 07:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30119595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBoxQueen/pseuds/TheBoxQueen
Summary: A new step into the Crew-10613 universe, an Among Us inspired storyline where each crew of 10 works under the MIRA Corporation and faces the impending battle of an intelligent alien parasite.Dr. Earl Heath has an appointment scheduled. He had gotten a letter whose contents were a surprise and a shock to him. When the other person arrives to speak with him about this letter, he needs to convince them that what they're doing is a mistake, peering through a window to a tragic and painful incident that still affects the survivors.
Series: Crew-10613 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081616





	A Meeting at Six

The wall clock ticked quietly. Each tick only made the doctor more antsy. He always wanted things quiet in his office, but while waiting, the silence was driving him mad. He had to resist the temptation to return to work while he waited; if he was working when she arrived, she might think that he thought her time wasn’t as valuable as his.

His office was homely but neat, everything clean and in its proper place. There were no pictures, just papers and words everywhere. As he shifted in his chair, he worried it would create an overly-professional environment for such a meeting. But he knew he had to focus. This meeting could make or break his job, and the company’s well-being as a whole. MIRA’s continued safety relied on the outcome of this meeting. The doctor took his glasses off and polished them neatly on his shirt, eyeing the door in between checking his lenses.

There was a knock at the door. The doctor jolted, dropping his glasses onto his lap. He hastily put them back on, smudge-free, and called out, “Come in!”

The door opened, and there stood his beautiful anomaly; dressed in the uniform that crewmembers wore outside of missions, the button-up shirt that matched their suit color and corresponding slacks. The poor girl’s hair was unkempt, and there were dark bags under her eyes.

“Hello, Dr. Heath,” she said.

“Well, come in. Have a seat. Please, make yourself comfortable.” Dr. Heath gestured at the chair opposite him. “And, do call me Earl, or else I shall have to call you Ms. Queen.”

Box smiled tiredly and sat down. “Thanks.”

“Now,” Dr. Heath began concisely. “As you very well know, I wanted to discuss this with you.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a paper, laying it out gently on the desk. The word ‘resigning’ stood out on the paper, as if someone had written it in bioluminescent luciferin. “I can’t believe I have to ask this, but… you intend to resign?”

Box nodded slowly.

“I see. After only your first mission with us… was it really that awful? Er, pardon, allow me to rephrase that…” He bustled about himself, trying to figure out how he wanted to proceed. “I understand that beginning your career here with a mission including an infected is quite terrible, but resign? You’ve only just begun!” He leaned forward, speaking gently. “Your letter did not specify, but it is better to hear it from you. Tell me, why do you wish to resign?”

Box took in the question and thought. “Take all the time you need,” Dr. Heath encouraged.

Finally, she spoke, her voice hushed and hollow. “How can you expect me to return?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Look at what I’ve done. It was my first mission, the first time I stepped out of the seminar classrooms and went out to prove my worth here. I went out onto that ship thinking I could help protect everyone. Everyone I had just met. Those amazing people that are on the crew. No one can stop us from being infected, but we can stop it from hurting the rest of us. But we didn’t. I had only just met Perry. God, he seemed so great, like he had his whole life behind him and was here to start anew. But I never even met him. And it was my _negligence_ …” Her fists clenched, making Dr. Heath worry about her fingernails piercing her skin. “… my incompetence that made us lose him. I didn’t look hard enough. I didn’t try hard enough. And now he’s gone. Just gone.”

“Do you truly blame yourself for the loss of Perry Clintwood? For all of the losses that happened? From what I’ve read from the reports, there were many people nearby, and not a single one of them could stop the parasite from attacking him even if they tried.”

“Things could have gone differently! If I wasn’t hunched over the admin table, I would have seen more! If I wasn’t blinded by my suspicions of-!” Her breath hitched and shuddered. She seemed unable to finish the sentence. “If I wasn’t blinded by other suspicions, I would have seen it leave! I would have found its movement suspicious! If I wasn’t so bull-headed into thinking I was right, we wouldn’t have lost two innocent people!” She was getting loud, tears welling up in her eyes. “I called it a murderer… I called that impostor a murderer, but saying that made me the biggest hypocrite on that ship, in this company.

“I just… I can’t possibly go on another mission knowing that I did something so terrible. It could happen again. Another innocent person could die, and the blood would be on my hands if I was dumb enough to make mistakes again. Even if I’m infected! I’ll know, but who knows if I could still kill people!” Her final word rang out as a desperate cry. She cleared her throat, and Dr. Heath spontaneously observed that she was fighting her body’s globus sensation because of her crying. He tried to leave his medical instincts behind and continued to listen. “So… I just can’t risk it. I can’t risk messing up again. Maybe, if… if I resign, if I go find another job or just go home… then I can’t hurt anyone else.”

Dr. Heath nodded slowly. No matter what his studies were about, there was always something interesting about psychology. But now wasn’t the time for such thoughts. “I see… I see. Answer this. Do you truly want to leave?”

She stopped. She thought. She opened her mouth to respond, then hesitated.

“Pardon, let me rephrase once again: Do you want to leave because you no longer want to work here, or do you want to protect those around you?”

Box sniffled. “I guess? I… I do want to work here. There’s nowhere else for me to go. But I can’t stay if I have the chance of killing people, so I…” She huffed and threw her hands down. “I can’t risk it. I can’t… I can’t lose again.”

“And there’s the answer,” Dr. Heath nodded, looking down at the resignation letter. “See, I’m no psychologist, but any medical professional must go through some psychological training. You have this problem, and you don’t know how to fix it. So you resort to falling back.” She only looked more troubled. “Oh, I don’t mean to say that in any demeaning way. It’s a common response, you see. Almost… an extension of fight-or-flight? No, that’s not quite it… again, psychology is not one of my strongest suits. But the point is…” He leaned forward, pushing the resignation letter back towards her. “This will not help you. As much as you think it would, resigning would not solve the problem.”

“Well, then what am I supposed to do!?” Her motions were getting powerful. Dr. Heath had to remind himself that agitating her could result in some kind of damage. “Should I turn myself into the police? There’s no, just, turning my back on the fact that I did something wrong! Something horrible! I never even met Landon either. I never knew him! And now…” She groaned and covered her face with her hands, fingers sliding up to her hair.

“Look, remain calm,” he said. “We can figure out a better answer than you resigning and leaving the MIRA corporation. We can get you help.”

“ _If I stay any longer, more people might get hurt_!” she insisted.

“Whether you stay or leave will not affect any casualties outside of your control, alright?”

“Something needs to change… it can’t happen again. The more I stay, the more likely it will happen again.” Hesitation bled from her words, her voice soft and broken.

“I need you to stay.” He did not plead. While his words were gentle and careful, they were not plaintive or demanding. “MIRA needs you.”

“MIRA doesn’t need a murderer…” She broke into a sob. “No one needs a murderer!”

“Stop. Just listen.” Dr. Heath could see the conflict raging in her mind, a destructive, imbalanced battle of hormones. He dismissed his intrusive medical senses. She stopped at his command, though she plucked a tissue from his desk and blew her nose. “The rubbish bin is right beside you. But, listen.

“I do not say ‘we need you’ in a desperate bid for employees. I say that we need you because you are the person that the MIRA corporation needs. You have shown some of the qualities that we so desperately need at a time like this. You have the strength and the prowess to face any obstacle that dares to stand in your way. You have shown an absolutely remarkable physiology, and with your continued cooperation and my work, we can prevent tragedies from ever touching the Mira corporation ever again. You fear being the cause of death, but you’re preventing death a hundred times more than you are orchestrating it. And leaving… leaving would only leave us vulnerable to more loss.

“Many of us make extreme decisions through guilt, shame, grief, et cetera. But grief and shame and guilt often blind us. They prevent us from seeing where we can go from here. And that’s why there’s other people around you, to see what you cannot. And I see that as much as we need you here, you need to be here too. You said so yourself, you have nowhere else to go. While I don’t know your history, I can certainly deduce the implications. And beyond that… beyond that…”

Dr. Heath often hid behind his professionalism, but at this moment, he let that go. “I need you here. I’ve never seen anything like you. Your condition, your psychology, you in general. I’ve never seen anything like it. I simply cannot lose someone who could expand my own knowledge and understanding of the world. Your crew. You know I’m the ambassador of Crew-10613, and I know every recruit that moves in and out of that crew. Braithwaite, that genius of a young man, he’s spoken to me about you. Miss Osborne, she would stop by almost daily to check up on you. Bless her, our nurses would have to turn her down sometimes just to let you rest. Your commander, Mr. O’Conner, was so worried to see your reaction after the infected was ejected. That man takes such good care of the crew… Even if it was your very first mission, your crew saw what you could do. And they need you too.

“There’s no downplaying the tragedy of loss. But you should know that running from it will not defeat it. We’ve all seen from your simulations, your training, even your first mission, as awful as it was to you. You saw that there was danger, and even in a state of distress, you faced the problem head-on instead of fleeing from it. What happened to that spirit, Box?”

Box was crying once again, working to contain it but failing. She tried to speak, but she didn’t manage between the sobs.

“There’s no one that blames you for anyone’s death. No one but you. We all saw what happened. And even after, we still need you. We can fix this. Just stay with us.” He picked up the resignation letter, and handed it back to her.

She couldn’t speak. She just took the letter, crinkling the smooth paper with her ruthless grip.

“It’s alright, it’s difficult to speak while in emotional distress,” Dr. Heath said soothingly. Box blew her nose again. “But now that we have both spoken ourselves, do tell me; do you intend to stay at MIRA corporation, Box? Will you stay with us?”

The wall clock ticked quietly. Then she nodded, slowly, but gaining confidence.

Dr. Heath laced his fingers, smiling. “That’s wonderful to hear. We won’t be sending you on any more missions until you’re ready, I’ll make sure of it. But between now and then, we’re going to fix this problem. I know a person, one Marielle Phillippe. World renowned, she is. We’re lucky she works for MIRA. Studied as both a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and she specializes in PTSD and similar afflictions. Lovely person. I’ll put in a word and get you started on appointments, alright?” Box nodded again, sniffling. “Take another tissue if you need it. Go on. And I’m very glad we could have this discussi- oh! Pardon, I’ve forgot. There’s one more thing, and I’m certain it will be important to you.”

Box looked up from behind her tissue. Dr. Heath lowered his voice.

“The Chairman himself has requested your involvement in a certain… project of mine. I’ll register you for some personal training that will coincide with my studies. I don’t want to tell you all about it yet, as that would spoil the surprise, but with it in place…” He couldn’t contain a smile, a grin contagious enough to plant the tiniest of smiles on Box’s face. “Death will never be able to touch us. Ever again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! Thanks for stopping by to read this next part in my series. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm glad you're here anyways! As always, I need to thank my friend Madeleine for helping me expand this fascinating world! As usual, this world encompasses a game of life and death, and there's guaranteed to be death. I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you look forward to the next couple of stories... I have some good things planned!


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